


A Strange Piece of Paradise

by alizarin_nyc



Category: Angel: the Series, Jossverse, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-10
Updated: 2006-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:36:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alizarin_nyc/pseuds/alizarin_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"This ain't a competition, but I'm telling you, <i>this life</i> -- if you choose it -- is going to kick your ass and take whatever's inside you and leave a big empty hole."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Strange Piece of Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> **Written for:** [](http://neversleeps.livejournal.com/profile)[**neversleeps**](http://neversleeps.livejournal.com/) for the [](http://community.livejournal.com/gunnficathon/profile)[**gunnficathon**](http://community.livejournal.com/gunnficathon/). Prompts: Post-NFA. A cross-country trip. Faith.

One thing about living on the road was that you never had any really clean clothes, any privacy or any space to spread out in. Motels and campgrounds were about as posh as they were going to get and in winter, they weren't above wearing every piece of clothing they owned while they slept in a tent or in a drafty motel room with a cranky radiator.

Charles Gunn grew up in the streets, he'd lived hard for a long time, and so he didn't think this lifestyle would bother him. Still, he remembered the good life, three square meals and a family. He wasn't talking about his childhood either, or really, his time at Wolfram & Hart. Those times had been less about family and more about getting by and getting ahead. In between all of that was a space, a place where he fit in and had been able to breathe. He had friends, a girlfriend, a good job, a home. He'd had a purpose and had been fulfilled.

This was something he realized in retrospect at Wolfram & Hart; when he over-reached and fulfilled nothing, grabbed for everything and came up empty, gave nothing and got nothing in return.

He was empty now, too. He'd thought he'd go out in a blaze of glory, all for one. No one could have been more pissed off than Gunn was when he woke up in an over-crowded hospital in a haze of pain. The screams made him tense and he had so many questions.

Harried hospital staff told him a "blue lady" dropped him off when the "earthquake" destroyed most of Los Angeles. Nice of Illyria to take the trouble. No sign of the rest of them, not that Angel or Spike would leave much behind, but there wasn't even a rumor to be found.

He didn't even recognize the girl that cruised up to the rubble of the Hyperion in her SUV and stomped down the door to the basement where he'd been living. If you could call it living.

Faith.

She propped him up on Angel's old cage and force-fed him some meds. Once the pain cleared, she patched him up like a regular Florence Nightingale, chattering all the while about "that bitch Buffy," and some dude named the Immortal and something about a guy with wood. Or called Wood, he wasn't sure.

He wasn't sure he was grateful, either.

But in time, he was good. He was better and matter of fact, he was chill. Faith couldn't find hide or hair of Angel either and she wanted to get out of LA quick. Something was brewing, something was coming up from down below, like it usually did, and it was going to explode right where Wolfram & Hart had been. Gunn couldn't shake the feeling that something was also coming for him. He was a loose end, and even though he wasn't dangerous, like Angel, he'd never known evil to just let it go.

They packed light and Faith drove the first leg all the way into Nevada. By the third day they were fucking and that was the way things went. It was pretty good but it was always sad and rough and too quick. Paper napkins from the diners and fast food joints were used to clean up because nobody wanted the crusty towel in the car until the next wash-o-mat appeared on the horizon. Bras hung from shower heads, shirts soaked together in chipped sinks, blankets were dried over outdoor fires and food was the fattening junk that lined all of America's highways.

Gunn still felt that something was coming after them, and he was pretty sure Faith could feel it too.

"Miles to go before we sleep," Faith said as they rumbled through another bare-bones town in the ass-end of America. "You want to stop for dinner now or later?"

"I just want to stop," Gunn said. He'd been driving for eight hours. "This car is starting to smell ripe."

"Don't look at me, bandage boy, everybody knows a Slayer's shit smells like roses."

"Roses that have been rolled in shit maybe."

"You're so classy." Faith put her boots up on the dash.

"Bitch, get your boots off!"

"You act like it's your car. It's my car." Gunn thought she liked yanking his chain, and she did it pretty damn well, he had to give her credit.

"You know what I'd really like," Gunn said, "Let's take a night off."

"We just took a night off last night."

"Not that kind of night off." It was true; they'd slept longer than they'd planned because they'd managed to find themselves so revved up that only once didn't cut it. Faith had pushed him up against the wall outside the motel room and they got each other off and then he'd gotten a second wind after his shower and pressed her down into the mattress, taking her from behind, slower this time.

They couldn't go on like that, he knew it, she knew it too. The post-near-apocalypse sex was an adrenalin rush that was wearing out. Or was going to wear out, sometime soon. But in the meantime, Gunn was a red-blooded male, what was he supposed to do with a sex-kitten Slayer on his hands twenty-four seven?

"What kind of night off did you have in mind?" Faith purred, and wasn't that the reason they kept this up? Girl was insatiable.

"A night where I have a few beers, throw some darts in a smokey den of a dive bar and crash out without having you riding my cock until all hours." He said it, but the fact was, he didn't really _mind._ But he was a little tired, he had to admit. And now that he'd said it, darts sounded pretty good.

There weren't any darts in the bar. But there was a pool table. And Gunn circled it like a pro, and Faith stayed away, hunting, if there was anything to hunt in butt-fucked Nowheresville.

Some guy circled the pool table with him. Gunn knew the minute he laid eyes on the guy that he was trouble. He's no vamp, he's not a demon, not even a stupid hick looking for a frat boy fight. Nope, this one probably fancies himself a detective, the way he's asking so many goddamn questions; obvious ones like "have you seen anything suspicious lately?" Boy's a rank amateur.

Gunn keeps his eye on him after that. He watches the way he works the clientele, hits on the pretty ones and slams just enough tequila to show he's tough and keep the ugly ones at bay. He has himself a partner, too. Floppy-haired nerdy kid with a laptop, sitting in the back, but totally obvious. Gunn felt a double-shot of guilt and sadness as he was hit with the one-two punch of Fred, then Wesley. His nerds. His friends. His loves. His loss. He washes it away with beer and gets another.

Faith stalked in with the usual bloodlust after a good kill. "Pony up," she said. Twenty kills and Gunn had to believe her, so he gave her a fifty since he'd lowballed it. Seemed like too small a town to have so much action.

So the next round's on her, 'cause she always plays fair, but she's only buying Jack. Not only that, but she's eyeing the pretty pool player and he's getting several eyefuls of her.

"Here we go," Gunn muttered.

Faith has never been able to turn down a challenge. Or a pretty face. Gunn waved his hand at her when she looked at him with her eyebrow raised. She doesn't need his permission, but she's smart enough to let him see her asking for it. He gives it to her; hell, he wants to see _this_.

"Dean Wincester, and this my little brother, Sammy."

"Faith. This is Gunn."

"Gunn!?"

Gunn rolled his eyes. If he had a dime for every time...

"Charles Gunn," he said, sticking out his hand. The one called Dean met his eyes as he shook, the other one just nodded tersely from behind his laptop and then shuffled some files around. "Kind of a loud place to be doing your homework."

"Yeah," Sammy said. "Just some personal research."

"That you do in a bar."

"Hey, all work and no play," Dean said.

"You look like you might take some time out to play," Faith said, turning to Dean. He grinned, and Gunn could see where this was going. Guy had mega-watts turned full on. Faith played it right back at him, and showed him her dimples. It was better than basketball. Nobody did full-court press like Faith.

Gunn scanned over what the younger brother was doing. He was trying to hide it, but obviously was too tired to really care. Gunn saw photos of eviscerated corpses, their necks torn out, and a map of the town with scribbles all over it.

It all looked so very familiar.

"Demon huntin', huh?" He asked.

The kid looked up at him sharply. "What do you know about it?"

"You have no idea," Gunn replied.

***

The boys had a nice ride, an Impala. They had some old-school hardware, too. Mainly rifles and shit, lots of rock salt. Sam and Gunn took a quick look to avoid looking too hard at Faith and Dean who were vibing off of each other outside of the bar.

"You're the ghostbusters," Gunn said.

"I showed you mine," Sam said. So Gunn opened up the back of the SUV. He and Faith had picked up stuff from a shop before they left LA. He impressed the hell out of Sam with the crazy things Faith had wanted -- _want, take, have_ \-- and piqued his curiosity with the stack of law books next to them.

"I used to be a lawyer," Gunn explained. "But I came by my knowledge in other ways than school, if you get what I mean." Sam looked like he had no idea what Gunn meant. "Anyway, it's going now. It's fading, leaving me, leaking out of my skull like the plug's been pulled on the tub and all that shit is right down the drain. Kind of an empty feeling now." He rubbed a nervous hand over his bare skull. He hadn't really told Faith about this, figured she'd never known the lawyer he'd been so she wouldn't really understand.

"I think I understand, a little," Sam said. His eyes took on a hard edge; suddenly he wasn't the kid Gunn had first seen anymore, but instead, a man who'd seen a few things. Gunn was familiar with that.

"I was going to Stanford. Studying hard. Not doing this..." Sam gestured half-assed toward the Impala, and toward Dean. "Then I lost my girlfriend, became a target for a demon, lost my dad - God knows where he is - and needed to help Dean fight the good fight." Gunn could see the look he gave his brother, part adoration, part desperation and mostly resentment. Gunn was familiar with that, too. He'd felt that way about Angel for the most part. Actually, for all parts. He'd followed him into battle, just like this young kid was likely to do for his big brother.

"Just remember," Gunn said -- he felt he had to say it -- "You can lead, too. He doesn't always have to be the Alpha Male. Lots of people get lost in the good fight and _you_ have to decide who can be sacrificed, not always him."

"'Kay," Sam said. Gunn figured if he didn't get what he was saying then, he'd get it soon enough. And that had to be satisfactory.

***

Sam didn't sleep, laying in the twin bed next to Gunn's. He was clearly listening to the bump-and-grind going on three doors down. They'd all been booked into the one motel in town, and even though Dean and Sam's room was 101 and Faith and Gunn's room was 105, Gunn could still hear the faint but insistent sounds of vigorous love-making. Whatever. He was tired and needed the sleep, but he could sense that Sam was worried and uneasy, and the guy's tossing and turning made Gunn sorry he'd accepted the roommate swap.

"Hey, so my brother?" Sam said when he realized Gunn was awake now, too. "He's cool, he won't hurt her, he's pretty decent to women."

Gunn huffed out a laugh. "Please. It ought to be your brother you're worried about. Faith could crack his skull by accident, the rate they're goin'."

"What?" Sam sounded worried.

"You know about demons. You also heard of Slayers?"

"Sounds like a comic book."

"Well, yeah. Demons and vamps have super-human powers. So do Slayers. Only they're on our side. There's only supposed to be one per generation, kicking ass on the most active Hellmouth. Now there's a bunch of 'em, kicking ass on all the crazy demon activity cropping up."

"Okay. Maybe I'm following you, so far. I guess my mind is fairly open, given what I've seen this past year."

"Good boy. So, Faith is a Slayer. One of the originals. Probably second strongest one alive, and take my word for it, that's strong. She helped close the Sunnydale Hellmouth, helped us destroy some nasty hellbeast in LA, and well, anyway. She's pretty killer. And I say that being a killer myself."

Sam seems not to believe this, but is at least pretending to give Gunn the benefit of the doubt. At least the conversation seems to be taking his mind off of his brother's business.

"I saw my girlfriend die," Sam says finally.

"I saw my sister turned into a vampire and I staked her myself. The only girl I've ever loved was slowly killed from the inside out while an ancient god took over her body. Everyone I've ever cared about -- all the people I worked with in the Good Fight were killed in LA by a horde of demons summoned up by the firm we all used to work for. I have no family. I have no friends. This ain't a competition, but I'm telling you, _this life_ \-- if you choose it -- is going to kick your ass and take whatever's inside you and leave a big empty hole."

It's the most honest Gunn has ever been since he last pledged his allegiance to Angel and his final solution. His eyes are completely dry of course, but inside, the vortex is spinning, the hole in his head is filling up with something else, not the law, not show tunes, not demon history and lore. His head is filling up with sights and sounds; images of people he's met, people he's known, himself.

 _He suddenly sees a large demon sitting on Sam's chest, ripping out his throat._

Then he starts, and shudders. And the image stops.

Sam was still there, silent in his skinny bed. He's talking. He's rambling on about someone named Jess, about his brother, his father, about the first vampire he saw, about some crazy Deliverance shit he went through, skin walkers, day walkers, werewolves, witches, blood and death.

And Gunn knows every single thing he's saying, as if he'd been there himself.

 _Something strange was happening._

As Sam talked, Gunn drifted off to sleep on the waves of images, weaving his way through reality and dreams. He couldn't tell which was which but when he woke up, he knew exactly what was going on.

A Kene'chogue demon was sitting squarely on Sam's chest.

Gunn knew this demon because their clan was represented by Wolfram & Hart and he dealt with a number of their cases. They killed like serial killers and so their murders were far too easily attributed to the gruesome slay of the day. They'd copycat whatever they read in the papers and even if there was no proof that the serial kill in question was part of the killer's spree, the police had sufficient doubt to comfortably ease off the supernatural leads and chalk up the deaths to their suspect.

Gunn had aided their clan in clearing them from blame. It was one of hundreds of things he kept compartmentalized in his head for later, when he had time for guilt.

The Kene demon was a big one, large bumpy body, ferocious teeth and three-inch nails on each four-fingered hand. It sometimes liked to play with its prey before ripping out the throat, so it was struggling with Sam -- Gunn hadn't anticipated Sam's surprising and silent strength -- but when Sam succumbed to a blow from its giant, knobbly hand, it quickly jumped down off the bed and dragged him outside.

"Fuck!" Gunn shook off his premonition, his dreams, his trip into an alternate reality or whatever, and was eternally grateful he'd learned to sleep in his jeans. "Faith!"

The three of them faced off with the Kene, Sam down on his knees in front, the ugly hand twined in his long hair. Dean was livid, antsty. Faith was still, gathering strength, clad in only her panties, a tank top and oddly, her favorite boots.

"Sam." Dean spoke, his voice that weird mix of anger and nervous breakdown. His brother was his weak spot, and Gunn remembered what it was like to have that blind spot, that love that made you crumble. He could _see_ it, clear as day, the way Dean had missed his brother when he was at college, could _see_ they thought they had nothing but each other, could _see_ their determination to be a family no matter what their father did. "Sammy, it's okay," Dean said. He was armed with one of his rifles.

The Kene twisted Sam's hair harder and placed a practiced nail at his throat. Kene demons didn't speak much, but this one uttered something that Gunn's halfway house of a brain could still decipher as "You move, he dies."

Too late. Dean was high on adrenaline and clearly in a _nobody fucks with my little brother_ mood. He fired, the spatter shot from the rifle impacting in the Kene's large and cartilaginous forehead. No good. Gunn knew this one couldn't be killed by bullets, or an ass-kicking. But Faith was moving in anyway, taking the opportunity afforded her by the gunshots to high-kick it in the head. The shapely heel of her boot caught in the deep groove one of of Dean's bullet holes and ripped, spilling blood and gore over Sam's head. Faith didn't miss a beat, she punched and kicked her way into the demon, Sam falling to the ground, his head still caught in its grip.

Gunn sprinted to the SUV and luckily he'd forgotten to lock it up after the show-and-tell. Fucking Jack Daniels, fucked with his memory every time. He opened the back window and reached in. There she was. His baby. His big ass axe. He hefted it out and spun around.

Faith was punching and the demon was giving it back to her, one-handed. Sam was screaming as the nails of the creature dug more firmly into his skull. Dean was dancing around and back, thinking he might have a shot, flipping his rifle and trying to decide if he could get a blow in with the butt.

"Faith!" Gunn warned. "This bitch needs to lose its head. Get the fuck out of my way, girl."

She was so fluid; he loved that. She fought like a ballet dancer and she fucked like a boxer. Nobody like her on earth. She feinted and got the Kene to blindly chase her with a fleshy arm, bringing it forward and pulling its momentum toward Gunn.

Gunn and his axe.

Gunn swung. Down to up, back and through. He'd have been a great baseball player, a pro golfer, a fucking fantastic tennis player, he could have been a contender. The Kene's ugly ass head came off cleanly and vaulted into the sky, up and over the trees.

"Going... going... gone!" He shouted and raised his hands in the air. Faith came in for a hug and a high-five. There might have been a victory jig. Dean rushed over to Sam, grabbing the kid up in a hug, _Sammy, Sammy, I'm here,_ and disentangling the twitching hand from Sam's hair. The body jerked a bit and Dean gave it some really solid, angry kicks until it stopped.

"We bad." Faith said. And she turned around and herded Gunn back into their own room. They slept in the separate beds, but smiled at each other before dropping off to sleep. "They've found you," Faith said, sleepily. "We gotta hit the road pronto in the A.M."

Gunn just smiled, thinking of Dean taking care of Sam three doors down, and how Sam was going to be just fine.

***

The early morning light was the harshest it had ever been in some six months on the road. Gunn felt what vamps must feel when they got a burning eyeful. He and Faith were packed up and sitting in the car, waiting, when Dean and Sam emerged and moved to their Impala.

"Hey." Gunn and Sam greeted each other, ignoring the other two. They exchanged cell phone numbers. "We'll be talking soon," Sam said. He had on a zippered sweatshirt with a hood that covered his bandaged scalp. "I have a feeling that you're going to need my advice too, and I already see that _your_ advice is probably pretty solid."

Gunn wanted to pretend he didn't know what Sam was talking about. But he was done pretending. He was certainly done pretending he didn't need the help that other people could give him. Sam had some sort of premonitory power, he knew that clearly and suddenly, like he'd once known the exact details of his case files.

Sam could probably see the same about him. But neither of them knew what the hell to do with this kind of thing. So they'd keep on traveling -- keep dreaming about the past, the future and all the possibilities in between. Dean and Sam toward California, where they'd heard their father had last been seen. And Gunn and Faith would continue East. To stay a step ahead of what was chasing them from LA. He hoped Sam would see what he needed to see before getting sucked into the encroaching Armageddon that seemed to have its origin in Wolfram & Hart.

"Hey Faith," Gunn said, before she had a chance to head over to Dean, slouched miserably against the Impala, to say goodbye. "Pretty Boy and his bro need some help. I'm sure they've got room and wouldn't mind the company. I've gotta run, but you don't have to."

"Shut the fuck up, Chuck," Faith said. "Dean and me, we had our thing -- three times in fact, before your demon so rudely interrupted -- but these younguns got a lot to learn. They gotta chase after their daddy, and I got bigger fish to fry."

She strolled over to Dean, leaned up to him in the shade of the tree that the Kene's head had soared over some hours before, and in the dappled sunlight, kissed him slowly and then whispered in his ear. It was maybe something dirty, but when Gunn saw Dean's eyes sparkle, when he saw his wide, white smile, he knew that it was something else. Faith liked this guy, and he liked her back.

He hated to get in the way of true love.

But Faith was fine, he could see that. "Two roads diverged and all that shit," she said, getting into their SUV and fastening her seatbelt. "All roads lead home, blah blah." Faith loved to mix her metaphors. "He's cute," she continued. "I'll see him again I think. Plus, there's always text sex." She pulled out her phone and twirled it in her hands.

"Why you sticking with me, girl?" Gunn had to ask.

"Chuck, you stupid fuck. You're my family. We know about Buffy and all that Slayer shit. We knew Angel. We were _there_. We'll be there when it all goes down. We're the frontlines, the first wave, we're black ops, Navy Seals, whatever the fuck. We're the best of the best. We're stuck with each other, because right now, we're all we've got. And it's going to be big. It's going to be huge. And we need to stick together."

"You're not wrong there. It's going to be apocalyptic. No one I'd rather face it with."

They grinned at each other and Gunn floored it, peeling out of the motel parking lot, leaving Sam and Dean in their dust, staring after them, cranking their rock-and-roll and mainlining the coffee Faith had brought them.

On the dashboard of the Impala, their father's journal pages ruffled in the breeze, opening up to a page with rough, smudged scribbles on it.

It read: _"The wolf the ram and the hart. Symbolic of the end of times. Possibly the origin of the demon that killed Mary. More research necessary."_


End file.
